Tories hit Brown on his record

George Osborne, who unfairly has been taking much of the flak for the Conservatives’ current woes, has an interview in The Guardian today in which he attacks Brown for failing to spread prosperity out across the country from London. Osborne is, rightly, trying to tie Brown to the failures of the Blair years such as the fact there are 600,000 more people stuck in poverty now than there were when Labour came to power. The problem with this line of attack, though, is that it is inherently backward-looking and so makes it difficult for the Tories to appear as if they are, to borrow a phrase, the future not the past.

PS This Fraser Nelson piece on the north-south divide is well worth a read.